In a world where transsexuals are as common as streetlights, Walt Cessna makes William S. Burroughs look like Pat Robertson’s 1992 speech at the Republican National Convention. In the sixteen stories that comprise Fukt 2 Start With: Short Stories & Broken Werd a reader slums it through a world rotten with people poisoned by their own debauchery and excess, straight into their very bones and blood. The collection’s characters are only responsible for themselves, but the world they have submerged themselves into will cradle their addictions and habits, and we, as readers, are captivated by their suicides spelled out on white pages.

The Fukt stories are about what we do in our cities and to ourselves, not what they do to us or what’s done to us. If Holden Caulfield had starting dropping MDMA, he and his observations would fit right into the book’s literary world, which is the most perverse picaresque tale I have read in a long, long time. To the book’s credit, as well as to a chaste reader’s chagrin, it delves and dwells in delinquent psychology. From kid to a Special K. fiend, to total queer to questioning one’s own sexuality, such as in “Fukt 2 Start With,” where a narrator is visually lured to a woman, against his own instincts, who is the “walking embodiment of semen depletion.” (321) Even the excess is unsure of itself, especially when compared to “The Is Not A Love Story” where incest is as normal as any other relation any of these characters are capable of having.

“Guilty by Admission” is a story which sets the AIDS epidemic as a backdrop for Cessna’s collection, which is actually a contribution to those who didn’t see the virus take the shape of a “plague” as it’s called later in the book. A boy named Levi puts a pimply face to those afflicted, as well as the vile ways the disease spread through prostituted sex—all for his love of music. For his love of the song. For a collection falling under the critical banner of “queer theory” and written by a man writing about his own experiences, the stories in the collection feature numerous female characters, as well; each is a beautifully destroyed and hood rattish as the world around them will allow them to be, such as in “Head in a Hello Kitty Bag,” which is where I learned what happens to a man when they give their special lady friend strawberry-flavored douche for Valentine’s Day.

Although the cast of characters are unethical and immoral beasts out of cages, there are no villains in the stories, each person is a victim of themselves—the users and the used make up Cessna’s world. The closer to villainy they get, the campier they are, even a pissing-drinking pedophile named Michael who was

“Smiling like Cheshire Cat and wearing a pair of Power Ranger pajamas with the feet attached and the ass cut out. Silver sequins were plastered over his shaved eyebrows and a demented, clown-like mouth was painted on in bright red lipstick. He clutched a worn-looking, stuffed Smurf doll and held a rubber novelty axe which he kept hitting people over the head with.”

His story, “Dinner with Michael,” is a PG Wodehouse story, with names like club Slimelight and a transvestite named Olestra Lucille Stools, as well as a man named Spam Goodwin. But the whimsy stops there. The title character also keeps a posse of twelve-year-olds tweaked on ketamine so they’re always…willing and accessible. Still, through all his criminal activity he is nothing but a product and not a prophet of future kings of the streets and rave scenes.

Years of photography have given Walt Cessna great, observant eyes, and he uses them well in his stories. There’s no light at the end of any tunnel, but it’s a colorful trip along the way. Since I began with a sentence of pure but honest hyperbole, I’ll end with one. Walt Cessna keeps the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy, sets in on concrete, sprinkles it with Angel dust, and gives life to it with blood the color of bar light neon.